Download or read book Not That Kind of Girl written by Lena Dunham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes two new essays! NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL For readers of Nora Ephron, Tina Fey, and David Sedaris, this hilarious, wise, and fiercely candid collection of personal essays establishes Lena Dunham—the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO’s Girls—as one of the most original young talents writing today. In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one’s way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told. “Take My Virginity (No Really, Take It)” is the account of Dunham’s first time, and how her expectations of sex didn’t quite live up to the actual event (“No floodgate had been opened, no vault of true womanhood unlocked”); “Girls & Jerks” explores her former attraction to less-than-nice guys—guys who had perfected the “dynamic of disrespect” she found so intriguing; “Is This Even Real?” is a meditation on her lifelong obsession with death and dying—what she calls her “genetically predestined morbidity.” And in “I Didn’t F*** Them, but They Yelled at Me,” she imagines the tell-all she will write when she is eighty and past caring, able to reflect honestly on the sexism and condescension she has encountered in Hollywood, where women are “treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms—necessary but infinitely disposable.” Exuberant, moving, and keenly observed, Not That Kind of Girl is a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the struggle that is growing up. “I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you,” Dunham writes. “But if I can take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile.” Praise for Not That Kind of Girl “The gifted Ms. Dunham not only writes with observant precision, but also brings a measure of perspective, nostalgia and an older person’s sort of wisdom to her portrait of her (not all that much) younger self and her world. . . . As acute and heartfelt as it is funny.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “It’s not Lena Dunham’s candor that makes me gasp. Rather, it’s her writing—which is full of surprises where you least expect them. A fine, subversive book.”—David Sedaris “This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they understand the experience of being a young woman in our culture. I thought I knew the author rather well, and I found many (not altogether welcome) surprises.”—Carroll Dunham “Witty, illuminating, maddening, bracingly bleak . . . [Dunham] is a genuine artist, and a disturber of the order.”—The Atlantic

Download or read book The Liars Club written by Mary Karr and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1996 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, a poet, recounts her difficult childhood growing up in a Texas oil town.

Download or read book The Rules Do Not Apply written by Ariel Levy and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this short, but profound book' David Sedaris 'I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.' Ariel Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she lived believing that conventional rules no longer applied - that marriage doesn't have to mean monogamy, that aging doesn't have to mean infertility, that she could be 'the kind of woman who is free to do whatever she chooses'. But all of her assumptions about what she can control are undone after a string of overwhelming losses. 'I thought I had harnessed the power of my own strength and greed and love in a life that could contain it. But it has exploded.' Levy's own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed - and what never can.

Download or read book How to Weep in Public written by Jacqueline Novak and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her darkly funny memoir and guide to the depressed life, comedian Jacqueline Novak doesn’t offer help overcoming depression—just much-needed comfort, company, and tips for life inside the fog. “Jacqueline Novak’s unapologetic and original comedy is the kind that gives me hope in this business.”—Amy Schumer With advice that ranges from practical (Chapter 17: Do Your Crying on a Cat) to philosophical (Chapter 21: Make Peace With Sunshine), this laugh-out-loud memoir traces the depression thread from Novak's average suburban childhood to her current adult New York City existence, an imperfect but healthy-ish life in which Novak is mostly upright but still rarely does laundry. At heart, How to Weep in Public provides a no-pressure, safe-zone for the reader to curl up inside. Keep this book on the shelf to be returned to it as needed–after all, depression is recurring. Jacqueline will be waiting to you tell you “You can fight another day.” No, not as in “fight on another day” but “fight this some other day.” Whether you’re coping with the occasional down day, or thriving fully in Picasso’s blue period, How to Weep in Public is the perfect place to regroup during a dark stint. So sit back, relax, and let Jacqueline Novak show you how to navigate the shadowy corridors of your troubled mind or the cheese display at the supermarket when food is the only thing that can save you.

Download or read book A Year Without a Name written by Cyrus Dunham and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "stunning" (Hanif Abdurraqib), "unputdownable" (Mary Karr) meditation on queerness, family, and desire. How do you know if you are transgender? How do you know if what you want and feel is real? How do you know whether to believe yourself? Cyrus Dunham’s life always felt like a series of imitations—lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman. But in a culture of relentless self-branding, and in a family subject to the intrusions and objectifications that attend fame, dissociation can come to feel normal. A Lambda Literary Award finalist, Dunham’s fearless, searching debut brings us inside the chrysalis of a transition inflected as much by whiteness and proximity to wealth as by gender, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about identity. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely his, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and selfhood. Named a Most Anticipated Book of the season by: Time NYLON Vogue ELLE Buzzfeed Bustle O Magazine Harper's Bazaar

Download or read book Reading Lena Dunham s Girls written by Meredith Nash and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, leading and emerging scholars consider the mixed critical responses to Lena Dunham’s TV series Girls and reflect on its significance to contemporary debates about postfeminist popular cultures in a post-recession context. The series features both familiar and innovative depictions of young women and men in contemporary America that invite comparisons with Sex and the City. It aims for a refreshed, authentic expression of postfeminist femininity that eschews the glamour and aspirational fantasies spawned by its predecessor. This volume reviews the contemporary scholarship on Girls, from its representation of post-millennial gender politics to depictions of the messiness and imperfections of sex, embodiment, and social interactions. Topics covered include Dunham’s privileged role as author/auteur/actor, sexuality, body consciousness, millennial gender identities, the politics of representation, neoliberalism, and post-recession society. This book provides diverse and provocative critical responses to the show and to wider social and media contexts, and contributes to a new generation of feminist scholarship with a powerful concluding reflection from Rosalind Gill. It will appeal to those interested in feminist theory, identity politics, popular culture, and media.

Download or read book Sour Heart written by Jenny Zhang and published by Lenny. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City—for readers of Zadie Smith and Helen Oyeyemi. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction • Finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • NPR • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Guardian • Esquire • New York • BuzzFeed A fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God. Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat—dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck—these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy’s Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again. Praise for Sour Heart “[Jenny Zhang’s] coming-of-age tales are coarse and funny, sweet and sour, told in language that’s rough-hewn yet pulsating with energy.”—USA Today “One of the knockout fiction debuts of the year.”—New York “Compelling writing about what it means to be a teenager . . . It’s brilliant, it’s dark, but it’s also humorous and filled with love.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, Today “[A] combustible collection . . . in a class of its own.”—Booklist (starred review) “Gorgeous and grotesque . . . [a] tremendous debut.”—Slate

Download or read book The Orphan Keeper written by Camron Wright and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven-year-old Chellamuthu's life--and his destiny--is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in Southern India and sold to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. His family is desperate to find him, and Chellamuthu anxiously tells th

Download or read book Professional Troublemaker written by Luvvie Ajayi Jones and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-12-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Judging You, a hilarious and transformational book about how to tackle fear--that everlasting hater--and audaciously step into lives, careers, and legacies that go beyond even our wildest dreams Luvvie Ajayi Jones is known for her trademark wit, warmth, and perpetual truth-telling. But even she's been challenged by the enemy of progress known as fear. She was once afraid to call herself a writer, and nearly skipped out on doing a TED talk that changed her life because of imposter syndrome. As she shares in Professional Troublemaker, she's not alone. We're all afraid. We're afraid of asking for what we want because we're afraid of hearing "no." We're afraid of being different, of being too much or not enough. We're afraid of leaving behind the known for the unknown. But in order to do the things that will truly, meaningfully change our lives, we have to become professional troublemakers: people who are committed to not letting fear talk them out of the things they need to do or say to live free. With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her professional troublemaking Nigerian grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing--because truth-telling is a muscle. The point is not to be fearless, but to know we are afraid and charge forward regardless. It is to recognize that the things we must do are more significant than our fears. This book is about how to live boldly in spite of all the reasons we have to cower. Let's go!

Download or read book One More Thing written by B. J. Novak and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller A startlingly original debut from the actor, writer, director, and executive producer hailed as “a gifted observer of the human condition and a very funny writer capable of winning that rare thing: unselfconscious, insuppressible laughter” (The Washington Post). A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins—turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just . . . down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.

Download or read book The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai written by Yehuda Amichai and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The largest English-language collection to date from Israel’s finest poet Few poets have demonstrated as persuasively as Yehuda Amichai why poetry matters. One of the major poets of the twentieth century, Amichai created remarkably accessible poems, vivid in their evocation of the Israeli landscape and historical predicament, yet universally resonant. His are some of the most moving love poems written in any language in the past two generations—some exuberant, some powerfully erotic, many suffused with sadness over separation that casts its shadow on love. In a country torn by armed conflict, these poems poignantly assert the preciousness of private experience, cherished under the repeated threats of violence and death. Amichai’s poetry has attracted a variety of gifted English translators on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the present. Assembled by the award-winning Hebrew scholar and translator Robert Alter, The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai is by far the largest selection of the master poet’s work to appear in English, gathering the best of the existing translations as well as offering English versions of many previously untranslated poems. With this collection, Amichai’s vital poetic voice is now available to English readers as it never has been before.

Download or read book Friendship written by Emily Gould and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year · A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice · Named a Best Book of the Year by Vol. 1 Brooklyn and The Globe and Mail (Canada) Emily Gould's debut novel is a searching examination of a best friendship that is at once profoundly recognizable and impossible to put down. Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years, but now, at thirty, they're at a crossroads. Bev is a hardworking Midwesterner still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe that derailed her career. Amy is an East Coast princess, whose luck and charm have, so far, allowed her to skate through life. Bev is stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of temping, drowning in student loan debt, and (still) living with roommates. Amy is riding the tailwinds of her early success, but her habit of burning bridges is finally catching up to her. And now Bev is pregnant. As the two are dragged, kicking and screaming, into real adulthood, they are confronted with the possibility that growing up might also mean growing apart.

Download or read book Marjorie Morningstar written by Herman Wouk and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now hailed as a "proto-feminist classic" (Vulture), Pulitzer Prize winner Herman Wouk's powerful coming-of-age novel about an ambitious young woman pursuing her artistic dreams in New York City has been a perennial favorite since it was first a bestseller in the 1950s. A starry-eyed young beauty, Marjorie Morgenstern is nineteen years old when she leaves home to accept the job of her dreams--working in a summer-stock company for Noel Airman, its talented and intensely charismatic director. Released from the social constraints of her traditional Jewish family, and thrown into the glorious, colorful world of theater, Marjorie finds herself entangled in a powerful affair with the man destined to become the greatest--and the most destructive--love of her life. Rich with humor and poignancy, Marjorie Morningstar is a classic love story, one that spans two continents and two decades in the life of its heroine. "I read it and I thought, 'Oh, God, this is me.'" --Scarlet Johansson

Download or read book I ll Drink to That written by Betty Halbreich and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stunning true story of Bergdorf Goodman’s legendary personal shopper Eighty-six-year-old Betty Halbreich is a true original who could have stepped straight out of Stephen Sondheim’s repertoire. She has spent nearly forty years as the legendary personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, where she works with socialites, stars, and ordinary women off the street. She has helped many find their true selves through fashion, frank advice, and her own brand of wisdom. She is trusted by the most discriminating persons—including Hollywood’s top stylists—to tell them what looks best. But Halbreich’s personal transformation from cosseted young girl to fearless truth teller is the greatest makeover of her career.

Download or read book Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud written by Anne Helen Petersen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You know the type: the woman who won't shut up, who's too brazen, too opinionated - too much. She's the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, popular BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen examines this phenomenon, using the lens of 'unruliness' to discuss the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Amy Schumer, Nicki Minaj, and Caitlyn Jenner, and why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures.

Download or read book It s Not OK to Feel Blue and other lies written by Scarlett Curtis and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is the freshest, most honest collection of writings about mental health that I've read...searing wit, blinding passion, bleeding emotion and a fantastic, heroic, glorious refusal to lie down and take it' - Stephen Fry 'Reading this book made me feel more normal about the things I feel sometimes...It's a great book; however you're feeling, it'll help' - Ed Sheeran 'This is the book I needed when I was little. May this be a leap forward in the much needed conversation around mental health' - Jameela Jamil Everyone has a mental health. So we asked: What does yours mean to you? THE RESULT IS EXTRAORDINARY. Over 60 people have shared their stories. Powerful, funny, moving, this book is here to tell you: It's OK. With writing from: Adam Kay - Alastair Campbell - Alexis Caught - Ben Platt - Bryony Gordon - Candice Carty-Williams - Charlie Mackesy - Charly Cox - Chidera Eggerue - Claire Stancliffe - Davina McCall - Dawn O'Porter - Elizabeth Day - Elizabeth Uviebinené - Ella Purnell - Emilia Clarke - Emma Thompson - Eve Delaney - Fearne Cotton - Gabby Edlin - Gemma Styles - GIRLI (Milly Toomey) - Grace Beverley - Hannah Witton - Honey Ross - Hussain Manawer - Jack Rooke - James Blake - Jamie Flook - Jamie Windust - Jessie Cave - Jo Irwin - Jonah Freud - Jonny Benjamin - Jordan Stephens - Kai-Isaiah Jamal - Kate Weinberg - Kelechi Okafor - Khalil Aldabbas - KUCHENGA - Lauren Mahon - Lena Dunham - Maggie Matic - Martha Lane Fox - Mathew Kollamkulam - Matt Haig - Megan Crabbe - Michael Kitching - Michelle Elman - Miranda Hart - Mitch Price - Mona Chalabi - Montana Brown - Nadia Craddock - Naomi Campbell - Poorna Bell - Poppy Jamie - Reggie Yates - Ripley Parker - Robert Kazandjian - Rosa Mercuriadis - Saba Asif - Sam Smith - Scarlett Curtis - Scarlett Moffatt - Scottee - Sharon Chalkin Feldstein - Shonagh Marie - Simon Amstell - Steve Ali - Tanya Byron - Travon Free - Yomi Adegoke - Yusuf Al Majarhi

Download or read book The Crimson Petal and the White written by Michel Faber and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.